A Momentary Lapse
by Concupiscence66
Summary: Written for the livejournal queer fest prompt: Howard/Vince, Lance Dior comes onto Howard and Howard finds he enjoys the attention. When Vince tries to claim that he had feelings for Howard first, Howard has trouble believing it's not just jealousy speaking. That pretty well sums it up.


"We're closed!" Howard lied (loudly and with authority) when he heard someone entering the shop. They were supposed to be open for another hour, but Vince had already knicked off to the clubs for the night and Howard was trying to reorganize Stationery Village. No matter how beautiful or well-organized it was, Howard was never quite satisfied. Naboo had suggested that maybe Howard was obsessing over the village instead of admitting what was frustrating him in his real life. Howard had told the little stoner to get stuffed before returning to work on the Staple Consortium.

"I'm here on a social call," the man said with a warm chuckle. "The one and only Howard Moon."

It took a moment for Howard to recognize the man. His hair was still black, but it was shorter and had streaks of blue.

"Hello, Lance," Howard warily greeted him. "I see you've changed up your look."

Lance Dior looked good. The harder, punkier style suited Lance's strong features better than Vince's beautiful androgyny.

"So, where's Harold Boon?" Howard asked, not bothering to try and hide his contempt. He softened when he saw sadness in Lance's face.

"Something wrong, Little Man?" Howard asked before even weighing the pros and cons of talking to Lance Dior, the cipher. Stripped of his borrowed bravado, he looked tiny and delicate. Vince was a hulking brute in comparison.

Lance shrugged and his smile did not meet his eyes, "Harold's gone back to Leeds, yeah? We grew apart after the band broke up and... Just between you and me, I think he might have had a bit of a crush on me."

Lance was trying and failing to look cocky and Howard had the unnerving feeling he was about to see a grown man cry. He knew what he had to do, as much as he hated to do it.

"I'll get the kettle on, shall I?"

xxx

Howard wasn't really interested in Lance's problems, but he looked enough like Vince to evoke Howard's finer feelings. If Howard ever returned to Leeds, Vince would be devastated. Sure, he'd put up a good front. He'd be out every night dancing, getting drunk, pulling girls, laughing and acting like he hadn't a care in the world... but deep down, where no one could see, Vince would be heartbroken. He wasn't quite as attached to Howard as he'd been back at the zoo, back when Howard had been his mentor and hero, but Howard was certain his Little Man still cared for him deeply. Things had gotten a bit strange between them recently, but nothing could get in the way of a friendship like theirs.

xxx

Lance's tears had soaked right through Howard's cardigan and rollneck, and he was certain there were some bogies mixed in there as well. He was getting tired of hearing about how Harold was both the greatest man of all time and the world's biggest dickhead.

"It's getting late, Lance," Howard said with a yawn. "Maybe it's time to go to bed."

He willed Lance to take the hint as he handed him a handkerchief.

Lance dried his eyes and said, "Cheers, Howard. Vince is lucky..."

For a horrible moment, Howard thought Lance was going to start crying again, but he pulled himself together and patted Howard's arm.

Then Lance kissed Howard on the mouth.

It was a gentle kiss. Lance's tongue flicked against Howard's lips, but he didn't press when Howard kept his lips firmly closed. It was one thing to have Vince's tongue in his mouth (and vice versa), they were surely immune to each other's germs by now, but Howard simply didn't want to be a Petri dish growing all kinds of disgusting diseases. For thirty-two years, Howard Moon hadn't managed to kiss a single person other than his mum and his mustachioed auntie, and now he had kissed three people in five months. His rooftop snog with Vince had been quickly followed up by a kiss from his pencil case girl, Andrea. Lovely Andrea had been put off by Howard's perfectly reasonable desire to keep their physical contact to a minimum. Howard Moon was a man of great passion, but he wanted to know someone a bit before sharing his mouth with a foreign tongue. Admittedly, he'd had every intention of being just as intimate with Andrea as he'd been with Vince. In fact, he had been contemplating going a bit further with Andrea, but when she'd kissed him, he couldn't help but think it felt a bit strange and unhealthy.

But Lance's kiss was not uncomfortable or upsetting. It was nice.

"Howard Tom and Jerry Moon!"

Howard fell off of the sofa, flailing in terror at the sound of Vince's screeching voice.

"That ain't me!" Vince yelled. "Howard, you bombaclat! That is Lance Dior stealin' my look again!"

Vince's hair had been shoulder length and pitch black when he'd left the house; now it was several inches shorter and streaked with blue. Like Lance's hair. They were also wearing identical outfits.

Howard looked to Lance for an explanation and found the Vinclet sheepishly staring at his boots.

"And you can piss off on out of here," Vince barked at Lance. "Go back to Harold Boon, let him worship at your feet. Howard is taken."

Howard tried to signal that Vince should shut up, there was not reason to rub Lance's face in his pain, but Lance and Vince only had eyes for one another.

"Well, maybe Howard would like to worship at someone else's feet, yeah?" Lance sneered. "Maybe he'd like to bake _me_ little cakes and straighten _my_ hair and try to be a famous actor just to get _my_ attention."

Howard was frozen. It was worse than the chokes. He waited for Vince to say something, to offer some kind of explanation that would allow Howard to again leave the Nabootique with his head held high.

Vince didn't say anything. He just grabbed two handfuls of Lance's hair and pulled.

xxx

Naboo and Bollo had to get involved, but eventually Howard was able to carry Lance (clutching handfuls of Vince's black and blue hair) out the door. Lance screamed insults at Vince as Howard deposited him on the street, but mouthed "call me" before heading into the night. He looked small and vulnerable walking the streets on his own, and Howard would have been tempted to walk him home if he wasn't such an annoying little prick.

Once there was nothing left to do but go inside and ask Vince what he had been telling everyone in Camden, Howard found didn't want to know. After returning from his work with Jurgen, Howard had put his cards on the table. Howard had served Bounty Bar pancakes to Vince by candlelight, and told his dearest friend that his feelings went beyond friendship. He asked Vince if he wanted a romantic relationship. Vince had said no and they'd agreed to pretend the conversation had never occurred. Howard had been skeptical, but things had been good since then. They were spending more time apart, but they weren't squabbling or at odds.

Howard respected Vince's decision to stay friends, because Vince was the best mate he'd ever had and if Vince were going around laughing at Howard with his friends - with people he didn't even like - then Howard was at a loss.

He waited for despair to shatter him into a million pieces. When nothing happened, he went back inside to find Vince holding a bag of frozen peas to his left eye. There was a dribble of blood trailing from Vince's nose to his chin and threatening to drop onto his expensive new top. Howard was tempted to offer Vince his handkerchief, currently drenched with Lance's tears and eye make-up, but he did not want to make the first move. He wasn't beyond hoping there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for Vince's behavior. Maybe Lance had stood behind an empty square frame and pretended to be a mirror. Vince was always swearing he wouldn't fall for that one again.

Naboo squeezed a frog above Vince's head, encouraging Vince to enjoy his "stupid face" while Bollo wiped the blood from his face and shoved toilet tissues up Vince's nose. After making sure to have done the most half-assed job possible, Bollo and Naboo patted themselves on the back for being great friends and went off to get high(er).

"Can you believe he's up to his old tricks?" Vince whined. "I thought he gave up on trying to be me after Harold Boon took off. I thought he was happy with his new look, the sad and broken look. I thought it suited him."

Howard jumped when the Nabootique phone rang. It was Lance, trying to set up a "second date."

Howard looked at Vince, who seemed to be trying to melt Lance through the phone wires with his angry glare.

"I'll have to check my calendar," Howard explained, racking his brain to remember what days he had agreed to visit Lester's head at the Shaman head garden. "Let me call you back tomorrow..."

"Wot?" Vince yelled, before storming across the room and grabbing the phone from Howard's hand. He yelled, "Find your own jazzy freak... again," before slamming the phone down.

"What is wrong with you, Howard? You're my mate. He had his Northerner and lost him. He ain't taking mine."

Howard looked at the flush in Vince's cheeks and the way his fury made his eyes glitter. He looked beautiful.

"Fuck off, Vince."

xxx

"Let me in, Howard! It's my room, too!"

Howard sat on his bed and stared at Vince's pile of satin sheets and clothes. Sometimes Vince's bed was too full of clothing to sleep on, so he would crawl into bed with Howard. That was their friendship.

And Vince had been laughing at him, telling the world about Howard's pathetic attempts to find love. Again, Howard's despair failed to make him disappear into a cloud of sadness. Not for the first time, Howard wondered if reading his mum's romance novels as a teen hadn't made him go wrong.

"I'm tired!" Vince whined. "Let me go to bed. You can date Lance Dior. You can shag him while I sleep, if you just let me in..."

Howard threw the door open.

"You can come in to sleep, but no talking," he ordered before lying back down.

"No problem, Howard," Vince agreed. "I can be quiet. There was a time when I was six and I..."

"No talking!"

Howard stared at the wall and tried not to feel.

"You can't go out with Lance," Vince whispered. "He's horrible. I got my hair done less than three hours ago, and he's not only knicked my style, he's tried to get off with you and make you hate me. Okay, I respect his time management skills..."

"You promised you wouldn't tell anyone."

Howard remembered how sincere and caring Vince had looked as he'd promised not to breath a word about Howard's indiscretion. He had been so warmed by Vince's affection, it had outweighed his sadness at being rejected.

"It weren't like he said," Vince responded after an extended silence. "Lance doesn't know nothing."

"Seems like he knows a good bit, sir," Howard snapped.

"He was always so jealous of me and you, then he and Harold started getting off with each other and all the sudden _he _was the lucky one. I couldn't stand it, him talking about how much Harold loved him and wanted him and how Lance had everything he needed..."

Howard didn't point out that Vince could have had Howard, but he'd opted to pass on Howard's offer. There was no way Harold was better at being gay than Howard Moon. He might be a bit slimmer, and perhaps his eyes were a bit more narrow, but Howard Moon was a man of great passion and pizzazz. Harold was an arse in a Hawaiian shirt.

"Just didn't seem fair," Vince continued. "And then you took off to be a big star and Lance was so smug... I thought you weren't coming back, and it wouldn't matter."

"You told him that I..." Howard couldn't say it. The first time Howard told Vince he loved him, Vince had laughed. The second time, he'd patted Howard's hand and called him a good friend. "What was that rubbish about me trying to impress you?"

"I said you left to try and impress me," Vince said simply.

"You promised to never tell anyone about my... momentary lapse of judgment."

"No, Howard. After you... after you made me pancakes, I never said a word to no one. Not even Mr.- not even Bollo."

Vince crawled into Howard's bed, like he'd done so many times before, pressing his face between Howard's shoulder blades.

"Don't be mad at me, Howard. I wouldn't laugh at you."

"You laugh at me all the time."

When Vince went quiet, Howard became concerned. He rolled onto his back and found Vince staring sadly at the ceiling.

"You really didn't tell anyone?" Howard asked, eager to believe but not wanting to be a fool.

Vince shook his head.

Howard closed his eyes, suddenly feeling he might actually get to sleep that night.

"Please don't date Lance."

"Don't be petty," Howard sighed. "He's going through a rough time. The men of Leeds are notoriously hard to forget."

"He'll say everything you want to hear, but he's cold inside. That's why Harold left," Vince continued. "He's all about how things look, he won't appreciate you. He won't be there when you need him."

"I'm not going to get involved with Lance. Sure, he's a good kisser and attractive in an impish way, and I don't feel repulsed by his touch..."

Howard was starting to wonder if maybe he should give Lance a call when Vince kissed him.

Vince was still the best kisser Howard had encountered. He didn't think twice about opening his mouth for Vince's tongue, and he even enjoyed the taste of Vince's alcopops. It wasn't easy, but he pushed Vince away.

"You're such a spoiled brat," he growled, but with little anger. "I'll let Lance down gently. No doubt he's become quite enamored now that he's been so close to the real deal ,as opposed to that skinny, freak-eyed Harold Boon. He wouldn't know Coltrane from Coldplay."

"I like you, Howard. A lot," Vince whispered before trying to dive in for another kiss.

Howard ducked and let Vince get a mouthful of hair instead.

"Enough of that, sir. We're friends, remember? Friends don't kiss when they're in their pants and sharing a bed."

Vince laughed and kissed Howard's cheek.

"But I love you and I like to kiss you."

"Very amusing, now behave yourself or go sleep in your own bed," Howard ordered. In spite of everything, it was tempting to just snog Vince for a bit, even if it would only lead to heartache. Everything in the world made Howard uncomfortable, but Vince felt right.

"I'm serious, though," Vince continued. "I do fancy you. I'm just not sure about getting married or adopting children..."

"I didn't say we should get married," Howard protested. "I only mentioned that it was a possibility down the road, as is adopting a baby from Romania..."

"See! I ain't even gotten to feel your bum yet and you're talking about children," Vince said, running his fingers through his new hairstyle. "You make it scary."

"We are already sharing a bed," Howard pointed out. "We live together, work together, we're in a band together..."

"And you tried to leave me!"

"You were trying to leave me," Howard pointed out, surprised that the memory of the Tubes still hurt.

"Only for a little bit," Vince protested. "Just so you'd miss me! I was never going to stay away, and then you left me."

Vince's eyes were wet, but he wasn't letting the tears fall. Howard wanted to comfort him, but he wasn't sure how. A friendly gesture could easily be misconstrued while they were half-naked and in bed.

"I came back."

Howard watched Vince chew his lips, appearing to be thinking hard. Vince would chatter away day and night, but he got nervous when he had to say something important. He never trusted himself to be able to find the right words.

"I know it made you feel jealous to see me with Lance, but he can't replace you, Vince. No one will ever replace you."

It wasn't as bad as Howard expected. He actually felt good about saying it. He'd been so careful with his words since his failed proposal of romance.

"Maybe we could just take things slow," Vince whispered. "Not talk about marriage and just snog for a bit. Let one thing, you know, lead to another."

"Or we could just go to sleep."

Vince wrapped himself around Howard.

"I have fancied you forever, Howard. I know you don't think I have deep feelings, but I do love you."

Howard sighed and tried to pull away, but Vince was holding on tight. From the beginning of their friendship, Vince had been clingy and jealous of Howard's attention. Vince would whine like a puppy for Howard's attention, but the moment he had it, he was bored. Howard had learned to dole his affection out in careful increments. If he was too friendly, Vince would start to tease and needle him relentlessly. If he was too distant, Vince would wear a skintight jumpsuit and spend the whole day trying to cover his nipples.

"I love you, too, Vince. You are a good mate. More or less."

"I get mad because you don't love me as much as I love you." Vince didn't acknowledge that Howard had spoken. "I just want you to love me the way I love you. Exactly the same."

Howard thought of Old Gregg. He had some sympathy for the merman. It was tough to find love even with standard issue genitalia.

"I don't want you to be tempted by some berk rippin' off my style. I want you to just want me. I don't want your squinty little eyes crinkling up for random women, or Lance Dior."

"What do you want me to do?" Howard asked, feeling a lump form in his throat.

"Kiss me for a bit," Vince suggested.

Howard kissed Vince, and while things stayed far more innocent than the romance novels that had shaped Howard Moon's young mind, one thing did lead to another.

xxx

Howard pretended to stare at his cellotape tree while Vince danced on the counter. He'd thought their new level of intimacy would make Vince less demanding out of bed, but it was the opposite. Any time Howard's eyes were not on Vince, his partner started acting up.

"Howard. Howard. Howard. Howard."

He was surprised to hear another voice chime in with, "Howard?"

He looked at the small, but very handsome and stylish, man who walked into their shop.

"Lance?" Vince squeaked. "What are you doing? Trying to be Howard cause it's the only way you can get into his pants?"

Lance looked confused. "I've been rocking this look since birth."

Lance produced a scan of a fetus with baggy, ill-fitting clothes and a bowler hat.

"I'm going to Leeds to find Harold, and I'm going as myself," Lance explained. "I just wanted to come by and thank the two of you."

"You're welcome," Howard said automatically, while Vince asked, "For what?"

"Seeing the two of you has made me realize that it's okay to be myself. I don't have to be covered in glitter to sparkle."

Howard recognized the look in Lance's eyes as 'meaningful', but he was a bit sketchy on the meaning.

"Oi! Quit trying to hypnotize Howard," Vince yelled.

Howard was afraid they would start fighting again, and perhaps they would have, if Harold Boon hadn't chosen that moment to walk through the door.

Harold was wearing a sequined bodysuit and a silver, floor-length cape.

Vince squawked like a bird. Howard knew Vince would be spending the evening at his sewing machine, making a new cape. He'd have to put forth quite the effort to get Vince away from his machine. He was feeling up to the challenge.

"I'm sorry, Lance. This is who I am," Harold cried. "I need to dazzle, it's who I am. I know you want a jazzy, brainy, manly man like Howard, but that's not me."

Howard puffed out his chest and tried not to blush. Of course he was brainy and manly, and naturally others had noticed.

"You look like a mix of David Bowie and a futuristic sex robot," Lance observed. "It suits you."

Howard and Vince politely averted their eyes for a few minutes to let the lovers reunite, then Vince had Bollo toss them out.

"Wow, Howard. Because of us, they're back together and being honest about their true selves."

"What a couple of idiots," Howard observed. Vince agreed.

"That cape was genius though..."

"Go on, then," Howard sighed. "I'll mind the shop."

Vince was halfway up the stairs before he suddenly ran back.

"Did you forget something?"

"Just this," Vince said before pulling Howard down for a passionate kiss. "And I need your bank card to buy some silver material."

Howard handed over his wallet. "I guess I'll see you when your cape is done."

Vince suddenly looked shy. "I'll make something for you, too."

"I'm not really a cape wearer..."

"I was thinking more of a sexy futuristic sex robot-type outfit."

Howard let himself get lost in another long kiss, but there was still enough blood left in his brain to think Vince was right. They probably shouldn't be talking about adopting children just yet.


End file.
